


my brain holds too many poisons

by kickedshins



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Drinking, Fluff, M/M, Murder, Pre-Canon, si-5 is evil found family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:28:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27075001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickedshins/pseuds/kickedshins
Summary: He strikes the match and warmth strikes his face, matching the warmth he feels in his stomach from the alcohol, matching the warmth he feels in his heart from Kepler’s delighted grin and Kepler’s comforting hand resting on his shoulder. Kepler’s face flickers in the light, jaw strong and hair soft and eyes dark and deep and Jesus, Jacobi’s way in over his head.“Do you want to do the honors?” Jacobi offers, for reasons he can’t fathom.Kepler shakes his head and tightens his grip on Jacobi’s shoulder. “This is your treat, Daniel. Enjoy it.”Jacobi drops the match in the tub and the world catches fire.orDuring one of SI-5's missions, Jacobi kills a man and has to dispose of the body.
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler
Comments: 14
Kudos: 45
Collections: SI-5 Roadtrip Fics





	my brain holds too many poisons

**Author's Note:**

> this takes place in harbin because the last place i traveled to was harbin and because they've canonically done a pre-canon si-5 mission in china. so that this is technically a could-be-canon fic i suppose! also 白酒 = 'white/clear liquor' wikipedia says it tastes like whiskey. i've drank a lot of 白酒 but i have not drank enough whiskey in my life to know if this is accurate or not so let's just go with it.
> 
> i have obviously never killed a man and disposed of the body, so please do not think my science is at all accurate. i didn't even do a cursory google about how to get rid of a body i just made shit up because no one is here for murder they're here for gay people. also it doesn't Explicitly say in the fic but i'm trans and therefore jacobi is trans because i want him to be.
> 
> that all being said, enjoy!

“Mr. Jacobi,” Kepler says, voice soothingly even, “I’d appreciate it if you acted a little less impartial to murder.”

Jacobi looks up from the knife he has stuck in a man’s side. “Huh?”

“You didn’t _need_ to kill him.”

“Yeah, but it was easier for us all if I did,” Jacobi counters.

“He has a point,” Maxwell says into Kepler’s communication piece and the combination hearing-aid-slash-comms device she homebrewed for Jacobi. She’s downstairs in one of the two rooms they booked at this hotel, squirreled safely away behind a wall of computers, because this was supposed to be a quick retrieval mission, and it didn’t make sense to put her in the line of fire when it wasn’t strictly necessary. “He’s tying up loose ends. If they wake up and realize you’ve subbed out their tech for duds and come after you, that’d be bad. Of course, that would never happen, because I’d never make anything that could be mistaken as a dud, but Jacobi’s lapses in his judgment of me aside, I don’t think he was necessarily wrong to make sure everything got taken care of.”

“Ah, you’re my favorite little enabler,” Jacobi tells her. He removes the knife and, as he wipes it clean on his shirt, he presses his foot down on his victim’s throat until the man starts to wheeze.

“Dr. Maxwell,” Kepler says, frown audible. “I feel as if you don’t deserve to get a say on if he can or can’t kill with impunity before you’ve gotten your hands dirty yourself.”

“What, you want me to come up and finish the job?”

“No need,” Jacobi assures her. “That’s what _I_ was doing. And, personally, I think it was a very smart choice.”

“You’re going to have to clean the carpet,” Kepler points out, and Jacobi swears violently.

“Oh,” Maxwell says. “Yeah, I kind of forgot we don’t operate in a vacuum. Yeah, no, Jacobi, that was pretty stupid of you. I know you have your weird little murder boner, or whatever, but—”

“I don’t have a _murder boner_ ,” Jacobi squawks.

“True, it would be difficult for you to have any sort of boner,” Kepler says mildly.

“Was that– you know, that was actually a pretty good joke,” Jacobi admits.

“Thank you. I try.”

“Okay, as much as I love hearing your chitchat, you guys have to kind of expedite this process,” Maxwell urges. “You’re in the clear—there’s no one outside the door or approaching it, from what I can see, and I’ve still got the cameras looping an image of an empty hallway to the official security feeds—but the longer you stick around in there, the more time there is for the possibility for something to go wrong.”

“Well, now we have to dispose of this body,” Kepler says, “as well as deep clean the room, and come up with an excuse for why this gentleman cut his stay at this hotel short.”

“I can take care of that last one,” Maxwell assures him. “It’ll just be a few clicks to change the length of his reservation and make it seem like he checked out, and then a bit of doctoring with the feeds to show him leaving the hotel on the day we’re saying he did. I’ll do it tonight once I check over the tech you two bring back. I can’t do anything about the body or the bloodstains, though. That’s really more your area of expertise.”

“I was gonna offer to just blow the hotel to hell or high water, but Maxwell’s plan is a bit less flashy,” Jacobi admits. The man trapped underneath his boot twitches once, twice, and falls limp. Blood trickles slowly from the stab wound in his flank and from the corner of his mouth. Jacobi twists his mouth into a displeased grimace as stains bloom on the carpet below him. He hates cleaning, and he hates the smell of bleach.

“Oh, so you wanted to kill _more_ people?” Maxwell laughs.

“No! Jesus, I just thought it was going to be necessary! What is it with you two and your insistence that I’m a twisted fucking psychopath, or something?”

“You can certainly incinerate the body,” Kepler says. “That’s probably the safest thing to do. Now, I don’t think you should do it outside, because there are too many cameras that you might pass by, and too many unnecessary risks you might take, so if it’s possible to get rid of the body in this room, that would be preferable.”

“I can whip something together. Put him in a tub full of acid.”

“Gross,” Maxwell says. Jacobi knows she’s wrinkling her nose in distaste.

“Effective,” Kepler replies. “I’ll bring the tech down to Maxwell, and you can stay up here and start cleaning up. Does that sound good, Jacobi? I’ll come back up with cleaning supplies posthaste. I’m sure I can snag them off a maid’s cart while Maxwell still has the cameras down.”

“Absolutely, sir.”

“Can I request something?” Maxwell asks.

“Speak freely.”

“Instead of me and Jacobi sharing a room tonight, could the two of you take it? It’s—Jacobi, before you say anything, it is _not_ personal, and I do know that you don’t have any cheeses with you this time—just because even if you two wash up, I don’t want to fall asleep in a room with someone who smells like blood and/or ammonium if I can avoid it.”

“Sounds good to me,” Kepler says, and Jacobi wills his heartrate to not increase.

“Great. See you in the morning, Jacobi,” Maxwell says. “Sleep well.”

“You too,” Jacobi responds, and by the time he’s done speaking, Kepler’s already slipped out the door, bags of stolen technology in hand.

Jacobi sighs and switches out his earpiece for his regular hearing aid. He’s sure he’s probably breaking some sort of protocol by severing the communications channel between himself and Maxwell, but he’s only going to be alone for a few minutes while Kepler’s downstairs, and he wants to take advantage of having those few minutes truly to himself.

“Body, body, body,” he mutters to himself. “Where do I– shit, I should clean this knife first, shouldn’t I. Eh. I can do it while I’m bleaching the other things.”

He slides it into its proper place, a sheath strapped to his calf. Standing back up, he puts his hands on his hips and surveys the room critically. Problem spots: the pools of red carpet, the backsplash of blood splattered against the walls and window, and, yeah, the dead body. Solutions: some strong bleach, some strong bleach, and, yeah, some _really_ strong bleach. 

“It’d be simpler if I could just fuckin’ explode the place,” he grumbles. Adopting Kepler’s lazy but firm lilt, he says to himself, “No sense in complaining, Mr. Jacobi! You have to face the consequences of having a little bit of fun. I’m a bit of a bastard who doesn’t tell my subordinate not to murder someone solely because I want to watch him suffer as he cleans up his mess!” 

He drops the facade and groans. Even when Kepler’s not in the room, Kepler’s in his head. It’s getting kind of ridiculous.

The man Jacobi killed isn’t very large, and even while taking all the necessary precautions to avoid getting his own DNA on his victim or getting the man’s blood smeared on any nearby walls, it doesn’t take very long to get him comfortably deposited into the bathtub. It takes an even quicker amount of time for him to whip up a concoction of chemicals that’ll do well at corroding the body in the span of a few hours without corroding the bathtub. He’s good at this kind of thing. Bombs are only science experiments trapped in metal, after all.

And, sure, he’s good at it, but he doesn’t like it. It’s ridiculous, but he just doesn’t have the patience and the appreciation for subtlety that’s required to be a raw chemist like this. Jacobi itches to take some sparks and wires out of his bag and call it a day, but he knows he can’t do that, and, besides, he’s already gone against Kepler’s wishes enough tonight. 

So he watches acid eat away at flesh and opens a window so the fumes don’t endanger him and feels his stomach turn at the sludge collecting in the bottom of the tub and decides to take a shower. And then he realizes that he doesn’t have a change of clothes, so he can’t do that. He’s almost about to put in the communications device again to beg a pair off Maxwell when the door to the room swings open.

“Hey,” he calls back to the main room. “It all went well?”

“You should be more vigilant, Jacobi,” Kepler chides. “What if I was an adversary who entered the room with the express purpose of attacking you?”

“You weren’t, though.”

“I could have been, though.”

Jacobi hits his head against the lip of the tub in frustration—there’s no winning this fight—and recoils in disgust when he realizes he’s gotten a little bit of dissolved dead person in his hair. 

“I have the goods,” Kepler says. Jacobi turns to see him standing in the doorway between the main room and the bathroom. “The stick,” he says, brandishing a bucket of cleaning supplies in one hand, “and the carrot,” he finishes, brandishing a plastic bag filled with various containers of liquor in the other. 

“You took a while.”

“I was getting together a change of clothes for the both of us. We’ll shower after we finish cleaning everything up. I have your boxers and sweatpants and shirt in this bag. Were you really on the tech crew for your high school’s winter production?”

“Yeah,” Jacobi says defensively. “I did lights.”

“Okay,” Kepler says. “I don’t have new shoes for either of us, though, so Maxwell will have to go out tomorrow morning and buy them after we burn our dirty ones.”

Jacobi grins. “Oh, so a little light arson isn’t completely off the table?”

“We have to dispose of our contaminated garments somehow,” Kepler answers, “and I personally don’t think that OxiClean will do the trick.”

“The body’s in here,” Jacobi says, jabbing his thumb at the bathtub. “So let’s hit the main room first?”

“Shoes off,” Kepler instructs. “No tracking evidence around. How long until our friend in the bathroom is no longer an issue?”

“About an hour, I think? Bones won’t dissolve, but get me access to a trash incinerator, and I can rid us of that problem.”

“There’s one in the basement,” Kepler says, “which you would have known had you memorized the hotel schematics, Mr. Jacobi.”

“Really? I knew this hotel was fancy, but that’s a lot, even for a place like this.”

Kepler shrugs. “Finest hotel in Harbin. Needs to do a lot of upkeep. The amount of people who dine here and who wreck their hotel rooms necessitates an incinerator.”

“Why’d I need to corrode the body myself, then?”

“It’s a lot easier to sneak a bag of bones down a garbage disposal than it is an entire body.”

“Damn. So I guess I won’t be needing to burn our clothes if we can just stick them there, then.”

Kepler smiles, slow and giving. “You can still burn them if that’s what your heart desires, Daniel. You can burn man’s personal belongings, too, sparse as they may be for such a big room. I don’t want to have to make any of us lug a suitcase around while making sure to stay unnoticed.”

“Oh, fuck yeah, you’re the best. Uh, I mean, thank you, Major Kepler.”

Kepler kicks him in the knee playfully. “None of that. We’re pretty much off the clock at this point, aren’t we? After all, my connection with Maxwell has ended, and I have this pretty little thing of alcohol with me, and neither of those circumstances is the most professional.”

“You’re getting too lax in your old age.”

“You watch your mouth before I add more burpees to your training regimen.”

“Sorry, I meant to say _thank you so much for all you do and for being the best boss-slash-coworker ever_.”

“That’s what I thought,” Kepler laughs. He kicks his shoes into the bathroom and sets down his things with a _thunk_. “Now, shall we get to work?”

It’s oddly calming to do a deep clean of the unnecessarily lavish hotel room. It takes a while, and Kepler’s unending stream of stories can get extremely boring, but they’re better than silence. By the time the room is spotless, almost two hours have passed, and Jacobi’s hardly even noticed. He gets like that sometimes, when he’s so engrossed in something that he goes hours on end forgetting to focus on anything other than whatever’s holding his attention.

“That’s the last of it,” Kepler announces, rag over his shoulder. “What time is it?”

“Fifteen minutes past midnight,” Jacobi says.

“Great. We’ll still be able to catch a few hours of sleep before leaving tomorrow. Onto the bathroom, then?”

The corpse in the tub is the first order of business. Jacobi turns on the faucet and watches sludgy flesh slough off the skeleton like a morbid piece of slow-cooked meat. Afterward, he gives it a final dousing in acid to get rid of the last bits of body clinging to the skeleton, and while he waits for it to finish the job, he and Kepler sip on what Jacobi’s Mandarin is passable enough to understand is Harbin beer. It’s not great, but it’s something. And once they’ve both finished their beer, Kepler unscrews a bottle of 白酒 and passes it over.

Jacobi takes a swig, and then immediately coughs it up onto the floor. “Jesus Christ,” he says. “That’s strong.”

Kepler laughs. “Yes, it is. I can take it off your hands if you don’t think you’ll be able to stomach it.”

“No, no,” Jacobi insists, defiant. “I just wasn’t expecting that to be—” he checks the label “—shit, sixty percent. But I’m good.” He takes another sip and feels it burn its way down his throat. It’s freezing in here, with the window still open, and even with the heating systems running, Harbin in December can be deadly cold. Jacobi knew what he was packing for when they got on the plane to come to a place that was farther north than parts of Russia, but he feels woefully underdressed in a simple black long-sleeve t-shirt. He wasn’t planning on letting in the winter air when he got ready for the mission tonight. The liquor’s good, though, warming him from his stomach outward, so he takes another (slightly painful) sip, and another.

“Leave some for me,” Kepler says, which is ridiculous, because it’s a massive bottle and Jacobi is not planning on getting alcohol poisoning tonight. Or any other night. “How much longer until we can finish up here and clean off?”

“Five more minutes,” Jacobi promises. He hands over the bottle and watches as Kepler’s eyes shutter closed and Kepler’s head tilts back and Kepler’s throat bobs, swallowing down the alcohol without even the slightest wince of discomfort.

“Fantastic. In the meantime, did I ever tell you the story about that time I convinced the Prime Minister of Luxembourg that his wife was sleeping with my brother?”

“You have a brother?” Jacobi asks.

“No. I have two older sisters.”

“Oh,” Jacobi says. “That, uh, that makes a lot of sense, actually. I’m an only child, so.”

“That makes a lot of sense, too,” Kepler says. His voice is oddly cryptic, and his eyes scour Jacobi’s face with an intensity that has Jacobi fighting back a blush. “Anyway, it all started when I went to Luxembourg for my former roommate’s wedding…”

Jacobi’s gotten very good at tuning out Kepler’s stories. He does that now, focusing instead on Kepler’s grip around the neck of the bottle of 白酒, Kepler’s stupidly shaggy haircut falling in his eyes, Kepler’s fingers tapping against the tile of this insanely fancy hotel bathroom.

They’ve been working together for quite a few years now, and Jacobi’s still sort of surprised every time he re-realizes that he has genuine feelings for this man. He knows he’s probably not supposed to, because first all, Kepler is sort of—not really—his boss, and second of all, Kepler is probably about five years out from figuring out his own attraction to men, and third of all, Jacobi doesn’t do this. Jacobi doesn’t fall, and he sure as hell doesn’t fall hard. Jacobi’s put together and aloof and, sure, maybe he’s called Maxwell his sister once or twice, and maybe he’s let out an _I love you_ or two while drunk with Kepler and Maxwell after a successful mission, but he’s got his walls and his comfort zone and he doesn’t need to make any sort of foray beyond that. He knows that either of them could die on any of their missions. Pretending he isn’t attached to them makes it easier to cope with the idea of that kind of loss.

Kepler clears his throat, and Jacobi shakes his haze away. Maybe that alcohol’s a bit more strong than Jacobi anticipated. “Five minutes is up.”

Jacobi runs the tap and clears the last of the dead man’s denatured DNA down the drain. He slips on a pair of gloves and puts the bones into the bag Kepler holds out for him, and once he’s done with that, he bleaches the tub to hell and back. 

“Do you want to shower first, or should I?”

Jacobi shrugs. “You can go first. I’ll clean this half of the bathroom while you’re in there.”

Panes of cloudy glass are the only thing that separates Kepler and Jacobi while Kepler showers. It takes an oddly long time, or maybe it only seems like an oddly long time because Jacobi’s tripping down the pathway to being drunk, and also the amount of fumes he’s inhaled from acid and cleaning supplies probably aren’t doing his brain any favors. And while Kepler showers, humming quietly to himself—some tune Jacobi can’t place—Jacobi cleans. He tries to focus on scouring the place of evidence and not on the man in the shower just a few feet away. And he keeps on drinking.

The water turns off. “Throw a towel over for me, would you?”

Jacobi obliges, and when Kepler steps out with said towel wrapped around his waist, Jacobi does not stare. Instead, he says, “Everything past the right of the bath is clean. Can you finish up and grab the guy’s stuff while I’m in the shower? After that we can figure out a place to burn it all.”

Hot water soaks through Jacobi’s skin like tissue paper, relaxing his muscles and warming his insides. He feels dirt and grime and blood drip off of him, and he sighs, finally clean after hours of having the residue of murder blanketing his body. 

Even for such a fancy hotel, the shampoo and body wash are kind of shitty, but he makes do with what he has. He takes his time cleaning off, and when his head starts to spin from the amount of alcohol he’s consumed, he sits down.

“Jacobi?” comes Kepler’s voice, amused. “Are you– forgive me for looking, but are you sitting in the shower?”

“Yeah. Um. Yes, I am, because I don’t want to slip and die.”

“You’re not going to slip and die,” Kepler promises.

“You don’t know that. What if I do?”

“You won’t,” Kepler says, and Jacobi believes him more than he’s believed anything in his whole life. He pulls himself back up to standing and he finishes his shower and he doesn’t slip and die. And when the water’s turned off, when the last of a stranger’s blood has been washed away, clean as Maxwell’s murder-free conscience, he asks Kepler for a towel.

Kepler’s changed into a pair of comfortable-looking sweatpants and a tight-fitting shirt, worn and frayed and overall very well lived-in. This time, Jacobi can’t help himself from staring.  
Kepler either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind, because he sets down the bottle of alcohol, cheerily tosses Jacobi his own change of clothes, and offers to bleach the shower while Jacobi changes. Jacobi nods his assent, and he’s so busy watching Kepler that he doesn’t notice Kepler watching him.

He changes into his clothes. They’re comfortable, soft, old. He’s set before Kepler is, and part of him wants to offer to help with the last of the room’s cleanup, but the other part of him is so very done with the smell of bleach, and that part of him wins out.

When Kepler’s finished, he stands up triumphantly and says, “And now for the final event.”

They put the bags containing their own soiled clothes and shoes into the bathtub. Kepler brings over the few articles of clothing and flammable personal things the murder victim had with him around the room and adds that to the hotel bathroom pyre as well. He and Jacobi douse the entire thing in kerosine and in a special liquid made by Goddard that’ll allow their flame-resistant mission clothes to catch on fire, and then Kepler turns off all the lights in the bathroom.

Jacobi has lighters aplenty on his person, usually at least three at any given moment, but something like this requires a bit of old school flavor. There’s a box of matches in one of the pockets on his gear that’s hanging on one of the towel hooks, and he slips it out with a sly smile.

He strikes the match and warmth strikes his face, matching the warmth he feels in his stomach from the alcohol, matching the warmth he feels in his heart from Kepler’s delighted grin and Kepler’s comforting hand resting on his shoulder. Kepler’s face flickers in the light, jaw strong and hair soft and eyes dark and deep and Jesus, Jacobi’s way in over his head.

“Do you want to do the honors?” Jacobi offers, for reasons he can’t fathom.

Kepler shakes his head and tightens his grip on Jacobi’s shoulder. “This is your treat, Daniel. Enjoy it.”

Jacobi drops the match in the tub and the world catches fire.

The blaze seems uncontrollable for a second, and his heart stutters in his chest, tripping over his need to prove himself as competent in front of Kepler. If the fire spreads, if the room goes up in flames, there won’t even be a Kepler to be impressed by him. 

But it doesn’t spread, because Jacobi knows what he’s doing, and their black t-shirts and athletic pants and the belongings of a ghost made not out of necessity but out of Jacobi’s own overzealous nature and loose morals crackle and singe and smoke fills the air and Jacobi’s lightheaded, Jacobi needs to sit down, Jacobi’s drunk as hell and has inhaled too many toxic chemicals today, and he’s falling. Falling backward, thankfully, because falling forward means falling into the fire, and he’s pretty sure he has enough burn scars and permanently half-gone eyebrows for a lifetime, but, shit, he’s falling backward, falling into Kepler, falling, falling, falling, taking Kepler to the ground with him.

He twists in mid-air and almost manages to catch himself before he crashes on top of Kepler’s chest. Jacobi clamors to apologize, to get off of this man before either of them do something stupid, but he feels Kepler’s hand on his head, Kepler’s fingers twisting through his hair, and he freezes.

“Jacobi,” Kepler says. “Are you alright?”

The care in his voice goes straight down through Jacobi’s heart and into his stomach, and Kepler’s voice against his forehead and Kepler’s hand in his hair and Kepler’s body pressed against his causes Jacobi’s heart to pound in his chest.

“I’m, uh.” Jacobi coughs, wills his voice to be a normal pitch. “I’m fine, sir. How are you? Did you hit your head?”

“A little,” Kepler admits. “But I’ll be fine after a Tylenol come morning. Which I would have taken regardless. This liquor’s a bit, ah. Well, not to say I can’t hold my own, because I sure as hell can, but this is sterner stuff than even I’d expected.”

Kepler’s face is lit by the fire that warms Jacobi’s back, and he looks so… Jacobi can’t place it. Maybe he’s drunk, maybe he’s hopeful, maybe he’s just plain stupid, but Kepler almost looks affectionate. Jacobi wouldn’t say _in love_ , but he’d sure as wish think it.

Jacobi pulls himself off of Kepler and dusts himself off. “Uh. Sorry about that. I. I can usually hold my liquor better than that, too.”

“I don’t fault you,” Kepler says. “I wasn’t the one trapped in a bathroom with acid fumes for an extended period of time.”

“Fair point,” Jacobi grants him.

They watch the rest of the fire in silence. Kepler’s hand doesn’t fall back onto Jacobi’s shoulder, and Jacobi tries (and fails) to not be too upset about that.

When it’s done, they wash the ashes down the drain and do a quick spray of the tub with cleaning solution one final time. And then it’s out the door and down the hall, liquor and gear in hand.

“Oh, there you are. I’d thought you died,” Maxwell says drily when they stumble through the door. “Which, honestly, I was kind of beat up about. You’re both pretty damn indestructible, and I’d be really sad if either of you died, and, more importantly, I’d probably get fired for letting you be dumb enough to do that. What took you so long?”

“Good to see you too, Alana,” Jacobi says. “And thanks for reminding me how peaceful my hours are when you’re not in them.”

“That almost makes sense. Are you drunk?”

“A bit,” Kepler admits.

“More– more than a bit,” Jacobi clarifies.

“I– Christ,” Maxwell sighs. “I’ll take that stuff down to the incinerator if you want. I don’t want either of you drawing too much attention. I can fix up the cams while I’m up here, and it’ll take me about ten minutes to be down and back, and I’m pretty sure neither of you can mess any of the tech up in that short an amount of time.”

“Thank youuu,” Jacobi sing-songs.

Maxwell types a few things into her computer and then goes over to the spare bed—the fact that Goddard really booked the three of them two rooms at this fancy-ass hotel is still astounding to Jacobi—and pulls a pair of gloves out from one of the bags of supplies arranged carefully atop it. “Here, hand them over,” she says, and Kepler deposits the bags of things to be burnt into her hands. She wipes them down with a bit of tissue doused in a solution that’ll hopefully denature any DNA Kepler or Jacobi might have accidentally left on them and heads for the door.

“Thanks, Dr. Maxwell,” Kepler says.

“You two owe me,” she tells them.

The door clicks shut behind her.

“Sooo,” Jacobi says. “What do we do now?”

“Watch the feeds, I assume,” Kepler says, “and make sure they show a series of empty hallways instead of a five-foot-four special ops agent and her goody bag of human remains.”

Ten minutes pass almost torturously in a silence broken only by the sounds of the bottle of alcohol passing hands and being slowly emptied of its contents. And when the door finally opens again, when Maxwell re-enters, Jacobi jumps up and runs over and smothers her in a hug.

“Whoa,” she laughs against his chest. “Yeah.”

“Thanks,” Jacobi says again. “You’re all good? Didn’t get caught?”

“More than alright,” she assures him. “If, for whatever reason, someone gets suspicious of the cover-up job I pulled with the digital records of that man’s stay here and decide to check out his room, and if, for whatever reason, you two didn’t do an adequate deep clean—which, by the way, I’m positive you did, I trust you guys—there’s nothing left of the man to track.”

“And we’ll be on a flight back to America by two in the evening,” Kepler says, “tech in hand. Good work, team.”

Jacobi feels his face heat up at that. He’s… less good at controlling his expressions when under the influence. Thankfully, it’s dim enough in the room that Kepler doesn’t seem to notice.

“One last act of kindness,” Maxwell says. “You two are drunk and tired and did more physical work than I did today, so I’ll clean off your gear for you if you want to just go to bed.”  
Jacobi pulls back, holds her shoulders, looks her in the eye, and says, “I’d die for you, Alana.”

“Yeah, yeah, Daniel,” she laughs. “I’d die for you too. You’re welcome. And, Jeez, I really did make the right choice to claim this room for my own. You reek of bleach.” Her face softens, and she puts a hand on his cheek. “Get some good rest, okay?”

“Hey, who’s the older one between the two of us?”

“Sometimes, I’m not so sure,” Maxwell says.

Kepler chuckles at that, throaty and deep. “C’mon, Jacobi. Away we go. Thank you again, Alana. You get to bed as soon as you’re finished cleaning, okay? Growing girls need their sleep.”

As soon as Kepler and Jacobi enter their stupidly big hotel room, Jacobi crashes onto one of the beds with an _oof_. “I’m exhausted,” he groans. “It’s been. It’s been a long day.”

Kepler sets the nearly empty bottle of 白酒 on the bedside table. And then he does something that sends a greater shock of adrenaline through Jacobi’s body than the murder he just committed did: he sits down on Jacobi’s bed.

“Uh,” Jacobi says.

“It has indeed been a long day,” Kepler says. “I– ah, this is. Ha. I haven’t had a drink like this in a while.”

Jacobi sits up. He’s so close to Kepler, close enough that he could shift just a little bit forward and put his chin on Kepler’s shoulder, and before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s moving.

“Oh,” Kepler says. He doesn’t sound upset or put off. Just surprised. Pleasantly surprised. “Hello.” 

Jacobi can feel Kepler’s voice in his jaw. “Hi,” he says.

“You know,” Kepler says, and Jacobi can feel in his chest that this is going to be one of Kepler’s ridiculous long-winded speeches that end up making absolutely zero points and leave Jacobi with more questions than answers, “you might have a bit of a thing for murder.”

Jacobi blinks. That was… not what he expected Kepler to say. “I don’t,” he says. “I just don’t have any issues doing what needs to be done.”

Kepler makes a non-committal noise, and Jacobi wants to kiss it out of his mouth. “Well, in that case, thank you for not having any issues doing what needs to be done, Mr. Jacobi. Even if your attitude about doing what needs to be done is… enthusiastic, to say the least.”

Jacobi shrugs and doesn’t let his head fall from where it’s perched on Kepler’s shoulder. “Better overzealous than underzealous.”

“I don’t think that’s a word.”

“It is if I say so.”

Kepler tugs Jacobi’s head off of his shoulder by the roots of Jacobi’s hair, and Jacobi is downright embarrassed by the way his stomach reacts to that. He turns to face him, turns so that they’re both facing each other and sitting criss-cross on the bed, and his hand falls to rest against Jacobi’s knee.

“What time do we have to wake up tomorrow?” Jacobi asks.

“Not until ten, probably. The airport is very close to here.”

“And it’s currently—?”

Kepler checks his watch. “Half-past one in the morning.”

“Shit. Late.”

“Jacobi,” Kepler says. He sits up a little straighter and clears his throat and taps his fingers against the inside of Jacobi’s thigh, and Jacobi’s vision temporarily goes black. “You– how come Maxwell goes out more than you do on missions?”

“What do you mean?”

“To bars and the like. Exploring the places we visit on her own.”

“Oh.” Jacobi shrugs. “I mean, she’s more of an adventurer than I am, I suppose. And she’s younger than me. She can last longer than I can. By which I mean she can stay up later and not be as tired.”

Kepler raises an eyebrow. “That still sort of sounds like an innuendo.”

“Yeah, well, she’s gay, I’m gay, and you know that wasn’t what I meant.” Jacobi leans to the side and takes the bottle of liquor in his hand and drains the very last of it from the bottle. He sets it down, swipes haphazardly at his mouth with the back of his hand, and looks back up at Kepler.

Kepler’s gaze flits wildly around Jacobi’s face. “Or is it just that you go out less because you prefer to spend time with me?”

Jacobi freezes. Only for a second, though, because he keeps his cool, and he doesn’t flounder, and he isn’t too attached to this man. Not at all. “In your dreams,” he says. “I like you and Maxwell equally. If it was a matter of that, I’d be with her half the time.”

“Yes,” Kepler says, sounding as if he’s granting Jacobi a generous admission, “that’s true. But, like you said. She is gay. You, also, are gay.”

“Yeah,” Jacobi says flatly. “This is– that’s pretty well-established at this point.”

“So—and I don’t wish to be presumptuous here, not in the slightest, and you have full permission to tell me to shut up if you think I’m crossing a line—would that not maybe, possibly imply that even if you like myself and Maxwell the same amount, you like us in different ways?”

Kepler’s treading carefully, speaking politely, using all the right phrasings. But Jacobi knows Kepler. Jacobi knows his tricks, knows the way he twists words into weapons, the way a speech can entrap its audience. So he brushes away his bonds before Kepler can attach them and refuses to play his game. Because playing games with Kepler is fun as hell—Jacobi enjoys a little light insubordination now and again, and Kepler’s most lenient about it when they’re playing games—but now is not the time for games.

“If you have a point, you should just make it,” Jacobi tells him.

Kepler seems a little thrown by Jacobi’s bluntness. Jacobi is the opposite of no-nonsense. Jacobi plays with his food, a lion who thrills in the hunt just as much as the kill. “You and Alana have something akin to a familial relationship, don’t you? More than that. You’re like brother and sister. Though, of course, not all brothers and sisters get along, so I’m not sure it would be fair to ascribe those labels to the two of you. The sentiment, though, is there. The sentiment is the same. Whereas your relationship with me… well. Your relationship with me is… decidedly different. It’s—”

Jacobi cuts Kepler off before he can continue. “Hey, Warren?” he asks, tilting towards him.

“Yes, Daniel?”

“We’re both very, very drunk. I’m not gonna remember this in the morning. You’re not gonna remember this in the morning. So, fuck it. I think you’re about to cross a line, and I’d like to cross that line before you do. So. Shut up.” Jacobi puts one hand on the bed between Kepler’s legs and the other on Kepler’s shoulder and leans forward and kisses him.

Kepler makes a bit of a surprised noise into Jacobi’s mouth, and for a second, Jacobi is worried that he’s broken something that can’t be fixed. But then Kepler puts his hand on the back of Jacobi’s head and pulls him in closer and Jacobi’s falling, falling for the second time tonight, falling against Kepler, and this time he doesn’t try to stop himself. This time he doesn’t feel bad for Kepler’s head hitting the pillow, and he doesn’t feel bad for the way the muscle of Kepler’s shoulders feels underneath his fingers, his surprisingly strong grip. Kepler’s face is rough against his, pricky from a day of not shaving, but that doesn’t deter Jacobi. He leans in and in and in, pressing himself closer against Kepler, and takes his lip between his teeth, and he feels the same way he felt earlier watching their clothes burn in a bleached-out bathtub, the remnants of a murder going up in smoke.

He taps out a pattern across Kepler’s collarbones—always in motion, he’s like a shark, if he stops moving his feelings will catch up to him, if he stops running he’ll die—and mouths his way down Kepler’s neck, and he knows he’s being a bit too urgent, a bit too needy, a bit too far gone from the aloof image of Daniel Jacobi he tries so hard to project, but he’s wanted this for a mortifyingly long time. It’s hard to hold back.

“Jacobi— Daniel,” Kepler starts, but Jacobi doesn’t really care about whatever smart remark he’s sure Kepler has to say, and shuts him up with a kiss.

And there’s a voice in the back of Jacobi’s head screaming at him that the other shoe’s gonna drop any second now. That Kepler’s gonna push him off, say this is just a fluke, that Jacobi’s gonna wake up from the world’s weirdest dream that started with murder and ended with… well, with whatever the hell is happening here. There’s a voice in the back of Jacobi’s head screaming at him that Kepler is only doing this because he’s drunk. 

It’s kind of hard to focus on that voice right now, though. Kepler’s kissing his way down Jacobi’s throat, teeth and stubble scraping, and Jacobi braces his knees around Kepler’s hips and closes his eyes and feels his head spin into nothingness.

And no matter what he has to deal with in the morning, Jacobi’s pretty sure that tonight is going to be worth it.

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was inspired by a tweet by @FLVEGAYZ on twitter that was something along the lines of 'kepler kills when he Absolutely Has To and is fine about it but jacobi is like, Weird levels of being completely fine with murdering people' so go follow him hes funny and puts out fantastic 12/10 w359 content and tweets in general and wrote one of my favorite fics EVER it's a w359 modern college au textfic which you can find [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24548890?view_full_work=true)
> 
> the title for this fic is from 'stupid mistakes' by lovelytheband, a band that puts out not that great music that manages to be a total fucking earworm despite the music being, again, Not That Great. (also this song is on my kepcobi playlist. if you want the link to that, dm me for it or just come chat with me @commaperson on twitter :D)
> 
> thanks for reading! kudos/comments always appreciated! <3


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